Many people face two financial planning challenges. Firstly, their projected super balance may not be enough to fund their desired living expenses in retirement. Secondly, they would like to enjoy the flexibility of being able to reduce working hours (or even retire in full) in their 50s. Often, the solution to these two financial planning…
I’ve got a lot of hard proprietary data on why the rich are rich and why the poor are poor. Some of the research I’ve gathered centres around the decision-making process of self-made millionaires. What I found is that self-made millionaires don’t make rash decisions. They often mull their decisions over, sometimes for weeks or…
The prospect of another interest rate hike next month has become more remote after inflation fell faster than expected. The monthly CPI Indicator came in at 4.3% in the year to November, down from 4.9% in October and a recent peak of 8.4% in December 2022. However, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has emphasised that the fight…
A while back my wife and I hired a financial planner. It was a big change to sit on the other side of the desk and see the process from the client’s perspective. I received some interesting reactions when I told people. The most common one was: Why does a Certified Financial Planner need to…
We are hardwired to be lazy. And we have our brains to thank for it. The human brain is lazy. Or, looking at it another way, the brain finds ways of doing things that enable it to work less. And that is exactly why we have habits. Habits use less brain fuel (glucose or ketones),…
There’s just too much to do and not enough time to get it all done! Sound familiar? If you ever feel this way at work, you’re not alone. Today’s demanding work environments and technology keep you hooked to work 24/7, and it has a large number of workers feeling overwhelmed. Most of the time, being…
Every generation seems to think the next generation isn’t doing it right. They offer well-meaning “advice” based on their own experiences, which may no longer have any relevance in our fast-changing world. Over the past three decades, the rate of change has been enormous due to rapid technological advances. Plus, society as a whole is…
Your money habits can make you rich or put you in a poor house. According to a recent study by Brown University, in which nearly 50,000 families were surveyed, most of the habits we pick up in life come from our parents (Brown Study). This includes money habits. If your parents had bad money habits…
Did you read, listen, or watch the news in the last year? But they shouldn’t. Because — repeat after me — you can’t do anything about any of them. Go on a media fast These events, and others like them, are completely out of our individual control. However, that won’t stop the 24/7 news channels…
No one likes to talk about death but it is a fact of life. The problem is that by not talking about it, many people never get around to preparing for it either. A common saying is that there are only two certainties in life – death and taxes – yet we generally prepare for…
